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Trek diary: The clouds over Mount Ulap
What floats above the Earth are these careless balls of fluff that move with the breath of time. It is a thing with clouds.
We had our breakfast at a Jollibee store along Session Road. It was a pitstop in our Mt. Ulap trek. The famed street glistened as rain poured.
"Uulan kaya sa trail natin?", one person in the group asked, holding a lighted cigarette. She blew a puff of smoke. The northern wind carried it along the near-empty road.
"Tara na. Titila din 'yan," our coordinator said. We cramped ourselves in a van and went on our way.
We reached Itogon, Benguet, our entry point, at the break of dusk. The rain had just stopped. A broken rainbow peeked through the clouds, greeting us as we made our slow ascent.
The trail was surrounded with pine trees, some still glowing with a youthful green color, their leaves bathed in yellow morning hue.
I took my steps, quickly at first. This was not the first trek I’ve taken. But it was my first in a long time. And the climb was starting to wear me down. Each breath became heavier.
“Manipis ang hangin dito,” a friend said. In my mind, I thought: Control your breathing until you reach the clearing.
We passed through a wooden gate and into a clearing where the group stopped to take a rest.
On one side was a view of Benguet being woken up by the weekend sun. Somewhere in there, a mother opened the windows to let fresh air in. The sound of a rooster’s call echoed along cold streets. Smoke rose from a cup of coffee being led by a freezing hand to a yearning mouth. Whereas I took a bite of a chocolate bar as the group teased our 18-year-old guide. She’s in a hurry for her date, they said.
But this was not the time to hurry. We took our time and our breaks. Then we headed on our way. We passed by cliffs and had to outpace a dark cloud looming behind us.
The wind was picking up speed when we reached another clearing. We rested and took some “pang-profile pic” photos near a rock hanging of a cliff. “Onting usog pa, 200 likes na ‘yan,” I said to the amusement of others.
But who wouldn’t like the scenery? The cool weather and lush greenery. The pine trees and the many, many cows. It looked like a scene in a postcard from New Zealand. Except that it was not.
We reached the top of the mountain around lunchtime. At the edge of the horizon, a sleeping giant hid behind the clouds. It was Mount Arayat in Pampanga. In between the two mountains lay a vast land filled with peoples and cities. It was there that I got a perspective not seen behind concrete walls and office desks.
It is a sense of finitude within a vast space, like tiny whites in a field of blue. That your life will move with time until it fades in the air. Time will go on and these monuments of nature will also meet their end.
But there is a thing with clouds being so high. They are content with looking at the horizon, away from the chaos and the noise. And when the time to go down comes, they do so to a dance of graceful descent. The slower they move, the better. — BM, GMA News
The trek was organized by TakeFive Outdoors.
